May 22
2025
ICE raids immigration court in Buffalo
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The building housing Buffalo Immigration Court at 130 Delaware Avenue. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker.
In a rare, perhaps unprecedented move, armed ICE agents raided the federal immigration court in downtown Buffalo Wednesday, seizing four people who had showed up for scheduled hearings.
Two people present in the court building on Delaware Avenue told Investigative Post they saw between six and 12 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — many in plainclothes, some armed — present in common areas and at least one courtroom.
“I’ve never heard of it, I’ve never seen it,” said Jennifer Connor, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Justice for Migrant Families.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen ICE in the courthouse,” Brittany Triggs, an immigration attorney with the Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, told Investigative Post.
“It was like a targeted ICE action day,” she said. “I’m wondering, is this the new normal? Are they going to do these kinds of actions whenever they want?”
The Intercept reported Wednesday that ICE agents had similarly stationed themselves outside of immigration courts in New York City and Los Angeles. In New York, at least two people were arrested after a federal immigration judge dismissed their cases.
That was not the case for a Venezuelan immigrant who appeared before Judge Walter Hammele Ruehle in Buffalo yesterday.
That man, Triggs said, had missed a filing deadline in his asylum case. She said the judge gave the man an extension, allowing him to file his paperwork next month and attend a follow-up hearing next February.
That’s when a Department of Homeland Security attorney spoke up, Triggs said.
“The DHS attorney picks up a piece of paper that’s clearly like an email printed out and asks to dismiss his case, under their authority,” Triggs said. “It was just really weird because she was clearly reading off of something. Normally you would make that motion earlier in the hearing.”
Ultimately, Triggs said, the judge moved to give the man an opportunity to respond in writing to the government’s motion to dismiss.
ICE agents arrested the man following the hearing. Triggs, who’d been assisting but not representing the man, said Thursday he had been booked into ICE custody at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center in Batavia.
She said three others were also arrested by ICE on Wednesday. Ethan Powers, a spokesperson for Assemblyman Jonathan Rivera, confirmed that four people in total were arrested by ICE. Additional information about those detained was not immediately available.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomICE spokesperson Marie Ferguson did not respond to a request for comment from Investigative Post. In a statement to The Intercept on Wednesday she confirmed that the agency was making courtroom arrests.
“Arrests of illegal aliens in courthouses is safer for law enforcement and the general public because these criminals have gone through security and been verified as unarmed,” Ferguson said in a statement to The Intercept. “ICE will make thoughtful decisions in each case and do whatever is most likely to keep the American people safe.”
Both Triggs and attorneys who spoke to The Intercept said Homeland Security was seeking to dismiss immigration in order to make arrests after hearings ended. Under current laws, Homeland Security can seek “expedited removal” for migrants who have been in the United States for less than two years who don’t have an active immigration case.
Triggs said she worried that the raid would have a chilling effect on immigrants showing up to court.
“I’m really frustrated because if we’re going to be arresting people for these civil violations then it seems like the people who are going to court and trying to get their status in line and complying with what they’re told to do shouldn’t be the people being arrested,” she said.
She noted further that the Venezuelan man she assisted Wednesday had a work permit, no criminal history and was paying his taxes. Now the federal government is paying to house him at the Batavia detention center.
“Now he’s detained at the taxpayer expense because he doesn’t have status and he came to court to comply with the order that he needed to go to court,” she said. “It’s so backwards.”
In a statement Thursday afternoon, state Assemblyman Jonathan Rivera decried the courthouse arrests.
“Federal immigration enforcement conducting stakeouts of courthouses where individuals are supposed to be going through a due process guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution is a stark escalation of this administration’s targeting of immigrant communities,” he said. “And, just like other actions over the past several months, it has a single intention: to stoke fear and to promote a climate of intimidation.”
“We need transparent answers from these federal agencies as to the legality of these stakeouts, and why they’re necessary in the first place.”
